shut down the city lights
by lydiamaartin
Summary: You wake up one morning and you're drowning. In your dreams, Mystic Falls had burned to the ground, unraveling and unraveled, nothing more than ashes in the wind and stories of monsters. - Klaus and Elena, around the world.


**disclaimer:** not my characters.

**warnings:** spoilers for s4, set in the distant future, second-person, written at 1am.

**dedication:** for hope (quantumesque) because she's amazing and i love her and she introduced me to this pairing.

* * *

Summer at the edge of the world is a little like driving through the mist, full of nothing but languid turns and sunshine melting on your tongue, something between a touch that reminds you of your brother's and a laugh that reminds you of an old friend's.

The thing is that a sleepy beach town on the coast of California isn't where you imagined yourself at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, but then you died, and then you lived, and then you left, and here you are.

x

It goes something like this – you wake up one morning and you're drowning. You look in the mirror, and your face is not your own; your edges are distorted like you're standing in a funhouse. Before you can stop yourself, you're running.

In your dreams, Mystic Falls had burned to the ground, unraveling and unraveled, nothing more than ashes in the wind and stories of monsters by the time you awoke. In your dreams, there was fire, and when you woke, you had drowned. That night, you packed your bags, stole a car, and ran away.

x

Two years pass before somebody catches up to you at last. You'd almost forgotten how much sweeter life is without the weight of Mystic Falls all around you, but the memories come rushing back when Klaus steps foot in your favorite coffee shop, looking for all the world as though he belonged there.

"Elena," he says by way of greeting, dropping into the seat opposite you, "how's my favorite doppelganger doing?"

"She's dead," you reply, and he has to pause a second to work out if you're referring to Tatia or Katerina or yourself. The idea that you can still puzzle him to this day is rewarding, in a sense, and also more than a little funny, in another sense. You find yourself wondering if anything has really changed in Mystic Falls, if anything ever really changes.

"Aren't we all?" he says at last, flashing you a smirk that you're sure has left many women swooning. "Is there a particular reason you've chosen this, ah, charming little town?"

You roll your eyes, tired of games that have carried over from your past and from his, from a history that should have been buried a long time ago. "Does it matter, Klaus? What do you _want_? You can't get any blood from me, in case you've forgotten."

"No, I haven't forgotten," he says, expression darkening as he surveys you, his gaze drawn almost imperceptibly to the veins where precious doppelganger blood had once flowed. "I just came to check up on you, Elena, is that such a crime?"

You stare at him for a solid minute, thinking, and then it clicks. "Caroline. She sent you here – oh my God, does she still have you wrapped around her little finger?" you demand incredulously, smiling a little when he scowls at you. "Isn't she still with Tyler? I figured she would have talked you into letting him go free by this point."

He narrows his eyes and says slowly, "If you want to know what your dear old friends are up to, I suggest you come back to Mystic Falls. If not, feel free to remain on the other side of the country hiding from your past, Elena."

It takes all your willpower not to shatter the coffee mug you hold in your hands. "Lovely to see you again, Klaus," you say as lightly as you possibly can.

"Yes," he says, rising from his seat, his voice oddly lilted as he looks down at you with a small smile on his face, "it was lovely to see you, Elena."

x

He finds you two years later in Marseilles, where you had escaped after Stefan tracked you down in California. It had taken a month to convince him that you did, indeed, have your humanity switch flipped to the setting he preferred, and another month to convince him that you weren't sixteen anymore and he wasn't one hundred and sixty two anymore and your sophomore-year glory days were not something that could be reclaimed.

To Stefan's credit, he had eventually gotten the hint. To Klaus's credit, he had actually managed to track you down even though you'd gotten herself a new identity in the two years since you saw him last.

"Clara Reynolds, I see?" he says cheerfully, sauntering onto the quiet, secluded little beach that you preferred doing your reading in. "Interesting choice of name."

You raise your eyebrows at him over the top of your book. "I literally just picked names out of a list," you inform him, and he chuckles and sits down, gracefully as ever, next to you.

"How's Caroline?" you ask, breaking the silence first since he seems determined to wait for you to speak. "And Tyler?" you can't resist adding.

"Wonderful, I'm sure," he tells you, leaning back on his hands and closing his eyes against the glare of the sun. "They've been in the Mediterranean for the past year, as far as I can gather from their Facebook accounts."

You blink in astonishment. "You have a _Facebook_?"

"I do possess the ability to keep up with the times, _Clara_," he says with only a hint of annoyance. "It's mildly necessary to being immortal."

"Ah, my mistake," you say airily, more interested in the subject at hand. "So you let him go, then? He's just gallivanting around the Mediterranean with your one true love – "

"Caroline was hardly my one true love," he interjects with a scoff. "Elena, darling, I am an _original_. True love is for Salvatores."

You pause, disregarding the sneer embedded in the word _Salvatores_, and think back to the originals you had once known so well. "Are you telling me that originals don't have true loves?" you ask, laughing. "I think Finn and Sage would beg to differ."

"Well, they might, if you hadn't killed them."

"_Excuse_ me, but you and your sister both killed me. Twice."

He glances over at her with as charming a grin as she had ever seen on his face. "Shall we let bygones be bygones, then?"

You roll your eyes. "Honestly, if your visits didn't seem so purposeless, they'd probably come across as creepy."

"I have a purpose," he insists. "Not everything I do is nefariously evil, Elena. Perhaps I just want to chat."

"You can go meet up with Katherine if you're really in the mood for doppelganger chit-chat," you tell him sweetly and pointedly raise your book up again. "Is she still dating your brother?

Klaus chuckles and says, "Don't be silly, Elena. You were always my favorite doppelganger, you know."

You stare at him, bewildered, but he doesn't clarify, instead standing and walking forward into the ocean water, leaving you to watch him from behind.

x

The next time, two years later, you track him down in the forests of Thailand where he seems to have taken a liking to the local wildlife. He doesn't seem all that surprised to see you, smiling when you appear and tossing you the leopard cat he had been about to dig into.

"Much better than American animals," he tells you, walking over as you eye the poor creature uncertainly. "I suggested Stefan come here if he insisted upon living on animals, but I don't think he ever took me up on that advice. His loss, really."

You bite in and sigh into the blood. Delicious, though it doesn't explain why he's here. "What happened to your human diet? Or has the big bad hybrid gone vegan after a thousand years?"

Klaus snorts, looking more amused than irritated. "I wouldn't call it veganism, but the wildlife here has a certain flavor that is actually preferable to the blood of most humans." He pauses, stepping closer, and grins at you. "With the exception of yours, I believe."

You hesitate, dropping the finished leopard cat onto the ground. "You remember what my blood tastes like?" you inquire of him, incredulous. It's possible, you suppose, that doppelganger blood tastes special, but you've never heard of such a thing.

"Oh, indeed," he says, tracing a vein that spreads from your wrist up your arm. "There are very few humans I remember the taste of, but you were always special, Elena. I would imagine it was due to your doppelganger status."

You jerk your hand out of his grasp, leaving him looking mildly offended. "Everything about my life is due to my doppelganger status," you mutter, mostly to yourself, though he's still listening.

"Not everything," he points out, crossing his arms and smiling. "How's that sire bond going? I keep forgetting to ask."

"Sire – " You freeze, having almost forgotten the sire bond that tied you to Damon Salvatore, once upon a time. It seems like a lifetime ago, or maybe even more, though you've only lived seven years as immortal. "I don't know. Stefan said since it stemmed from my feelings for Damon, it went away after I no longer had feelings for Damon."

"Really?" Klaus raises an eyebrow, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. "So you no longer have feelings for any Salvatores? At all?"

You frown at him. "I didn't say that. In case you've forgotten, I do have my humanity switch on. I care for them, and I always will."

"Sentimental, and yet … not romantic," he muses, shooting you a smirk. "I'm impressed, Elena."

"That's what I live for," you retort, and he actually chuckles and then offers you his arm.

"I'm staying in a lovely hotel just beyond the forest," he says as you slowly slide your hand into his arm, "care to join me?"

"What makes you think I want to join you?" you ask, tilting your face to look at him and purposely not moving your feet. Klaus takes the moment of silence to look over at you, his head leaning closer than would normally be comfortable.

"You found me, didn't you?" he murmurs into your ear, and then you're moving, vampire speed, through the forest, through the streets of Thailand, without any time to think or breathe or wonder what his statement says about him finding you twice before.

(The hotel really is lovely.)

x

It goes like this – a doppelganger and an original, a circle of power and magic and running and winning and losing, a town of monsters and a history of legends. One by one, the pieces of the puzzle come crumbling down until all that remains is the blood of Tatia Petrova and Mikael's child. Elena and Klaus, Klaus and Elena, hybrid and doppelganger, and suddenly you're not running anymore.

Mystic Falls may have burned to the ground by now, but Thailand is here and real and solid – and there are no monsters in this land.

x

Winter at the edge of the world is more like sailing across the seas, all stormy twists and rain soaking through your curls, something halfway between Klaus's touch on your veins and Klaus's lips on your own, a symphony of ancient legends culminating in you.

Doppelgangers always die, but doppelgangers always live, and here you are, at the end of the world with an original by your side to watch the sun rise again.

* * *

**a/n:** in hindsight, maybe writing and publishing a story between 1 and 3 am is not a smart idea, but you know. it's been one of those days. i realize i probably got the characterizations and stuff all wrong because i only just finished marathoning the show, but if you found anything even remotely enjoyable in this, i would really appreciate a review!

and please **DON'T** favorite without reviewing, thank you!


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